Thursday, March 29, 2012

Flavorwire has published a wishlist of reality-TV shows they'd like to see about famous authors. Since my own life is fairly boring, I initially thought this was a lame idea. After all, how interesting could it be to watch a writer pounding away at a keyboard. Actually, pretty darn interesting for these writers. If this series goes into production, I'm going to have to look into my inner weirdness. (The article may have appealed to me because I'm going to see a play of The Great Gatsby tonight.)

Saturday, March 24, 2012

"What
makes a thriller thrilling? Nonstop action, precarious situations, hair-raising
suspense, and heroic characters all exemplify the best thrillers on the market." This Reader's Digest post list their editors' choice for best thrillers. I'm providing the link to this list because I was surprised to find that I had read all ten books. (They actually cheated and list more than twenty books.) I'm not sure I would rate them the ten best of all time, but every one of them is pushing hard for the honor.

Tuesday, March 20, 2012

Antagonists
don’t have to be alive, or even a machine. Many good stories have been written where
the protagonist is challenged by a place. In Last of the Breed, Louis L'Amour pits his protagonist against the Siberia wasteland.
Although humans made appearances, Daniel Defoe primarily challenged Robinson Caruso
with a deserted island. There are many stories of a single person fighting
against the elements, but the antagonist as a place does not need to threaten
only individuals. The true antagonist in Clive Cussler’s Raise the Titanic is the depths of the frigid Atlantic. Sebastian Junger in The Perfect
Storm pits weather against the fishing crew of the Andrea Gail. Although nonfiction, in Alive: The Story of the Andes Survivors, Piers Paul Read tells the story of how a rugby team won a battle
against a mountain.

Place
can also take on a secondary antagonist role. To a great extent, Dorothy is
attempting to escape Kansas and Tara is Scarlett O'Hara’s nemesis.

When
the antagonist is a place, then the story is often one of gut-wrenching endurance.
The narrative almost always starts with a set-up that shows the protagonist as
completely unprepared for a test of stamina and courage. These are stressful
stories that examine human limits. Most of the time, the protagonist wins, but sometimes
not, as in The Perfect Storm.

Friday, March 16, 2012

Today is the 261st
anniversary of the birth of James Madison.
Madison was the Father of the Constitution, the Father of the Bill of
Rights, and our fourth president. He was a small man. In fact, a contemporary
claimed he was “no bigger than half a piece of soap.” Despite a soft voice, he
successfully debated Patrick Henry, who at the time was considered the best
orator in the United States. His voice might have been low and a bit high pitched, but
his words were powerful. It seems fitting that on his birthday we allow Madison
to speak for himself.

Emily Temple has written an interesting piece about divisive characters in literary history. These are not your run-of-the-mill heroes--or even antiheroes. These characters are a small breed set apart from normal and abnormal protagonists. Divisive characters agitate the rest of the cast, and elicit a strong reaction from readers. For example, Temple calls Scarlett O'Hara, "selfish, vain, spoiled, and sometimes manipulative to the point of sheer cruelty." Scarlett may have been a handful, but Gone With the Wind would be a boring story without her. To read the entire article, follow this link.

Saturday, March 10, 2012

When a technology is about to break out commercially, entrepreneurs get their competitive spirits up. They want to dominate the marketplace for the new and nifty. Inevitably, a handful of business savvy technologists carve out large segments of the market and stiff arm any upstart that has the audacity to invade their territory. Before long, there is usually only two to five left standing. Except, they aren't exactly standing around idle ... these titans are gathering up arm's full of cash. Piles of money that mere mortals can't even comprehend.
Is it all really about money? Not a chance. It's the game. It's about winning, and money is just how the game is scored.
I could be talking about Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg, Larry Page or Sergey Brin, but I'm not. I'm researching the next Steve Dancy Tale, which will be titled The Return(Which is now available). The men who brought this thought to mind lived one hundred and fifty years ago. Today, technology entrepreneurs build their empires along the western seaboard, but during the mid-eighteenth century, they live in New York City and its environs. If you want to see how little has changed in the business of leveraging emerging technologies, read about Thomas Edison, George Westinghouse, Nikloa Tesla, and their contemporaries. Bringing electricity to the masses was as electrifying as anything this modern bunch is doing with computers, clouds, and tablets. You'll be startled at the parallels.

Tuesday, March 6, 2012

Prior to 1776, world
history was primarily written about kings and emperors. The American experiment
shook the world. Not only did the colonies break away from the biggest and most
powerful empire in history, they took the musings of the brightest thinkers of
the Enlightenment and implemented them. The Founding of the United States was
simultaneously an armed rebellion against tyranny and a revolution of
ideas—ideas that changed the course of world history. Principled Action shows how the Founders built this great nation
with sacrifice, courage, and steadfast principles.

Saturday, March 3, 2012

In
a previous post, I wrote about villainous animals and machines, but most
villains are human. In my mind, villains are a subset of antagonists, and the
very worst villains are yet a further sub-division. In this article, I’ll look
at the most depraved villains in modern storytelling. These are really bad guys
and gals who have no socially redeeming value. They have three overwhelming
characteristics:

1.
they
mean the protagonist the worst imaginable harm,

2.
they
are smart or brutally forceful—or both,

3.
there
is no redemption at the end of the story.

These
are the most memorable villains in all of fiction. I have a Pinterest Board titled “Bad to the Bone” that displays pinups of extreme villains that meet
the above criteria. It only looks like a crowded field. In fact, bad to the bone antagonists are the
exception. Most villains are portrayed with far more subtlety or empathy. The
most obvious reason for painting antagonists in gray-tones is that humans are
not all good or all bad, but when a villain is expertly portrayed as pure evil,
it raises the story to a level that can transcend generations and cultures.

As
an example, look at Martin Vanger, from The
Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. He is not only a second generation serial
killer of young girls, he enjoys assaulting and torturing them over an extended
period of time. He has no remorse, he shows no mercy, and he neither seeks nor
finds redemption. Another example is Elliot Marston in Quigley Down Under, who under false pretenses lures Quigley to
Australia to kill aborigines. Other examples include the Wicked Witch of the
West, Chigurh in No Country for Old Men,
Salieri in Amadeus, Heath
Ledger’s portrayal of The Joker, and the front-runner for worst fictional
father of all time, Jack Torrance in The
Shining. There
is only one answer for these extreme villains … death.

Most
stories are about a flawed hero pitted against a villain that harbors some sort
of rationalization for his less than pristine behavior. You might call this the
decent against the bad, rather than good versus evil. Nuanced characters are
more like real life. But sociopaths exist in real life as well. Amon Goeth in Schindler's List is perhaps the most
disturbing of my gallery of rogues because he is based on a real person. As in
all storytelling, we are meant to take away lessons from tales of
good versus evil.

Home to The Steve Dancy Tales

"The James Best books...are about the best new Western series to come along since Larry McMurtry."—Larry Winget, True West Magazine

"James D. Best is arguably one of the best writers of westerns." —Alan Caruba, Bookviews

"I have to say its one of the best western books I’ve read in a long time. The characters, the plot, everything seem so real. You’ll find yourself lost in the book—the fast pace keeps it interesting." — Maritza Barone, Woman'sDay